Now: 13-19 January 2025

Quiet week, settling into the new year.

On Monday, I don’t think I really did much of anything.

On Tuesday, same. I sat by the window in the morning and tried to soak up a little bit of sunshine.

On Wednesday, I listened to an episode of Ezra Koenig’s podcast Time Crisis where he interviews Phil Elverum. I like Vampire Weekend and I like The Microphones/Mount Eerie (like every other millennial white guy) but holy smokes was this a rough listen. I think that maybe this whole podcast is just an opportunity for Ezra Koenig to cosplay as Joe Rogan? And maybe to try and get his foot in the door on these “parasocial relationship” things that everyone is talking about? I only got through the first, uh, 45 minutes of like a 2-hour show; it was 45 minutes of three guys trying to prove that each knew more footballers’ names than the other two. This is the masculinity crisis manifest!

On Thursday I rode my bike in to Durham to get the train down to Leeds for work in the office. I really like going in to the office and seeing all of my coworkers in person, but by bike it winds up being like a 2.5-hour commute each way, which isn’t sustainable. The weather was brisk but coöperative.

On Friday, the quick link on my bike chain failed out of nowhere. I said a quiet prayer of thanks for not getting stranded in frickin Sherburn Hill at 1am.

Also on Friday (morning), I realised that I forgot my computer charger, a big, unwieldy, 170W brick with two thick leads coming out of each end, at the office, so—

On Saturday, Sam, Ghyll and I made a day trip back down to Leeds on Saturday. We meandered around the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey and then went for a long walk along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Lots of narrowboats lined up in a little, well, if it were a railway or a road I’d call it a layby. Like a canal layby. Then we stopped in at the Leeds Industrial Museum, housed in a big old woollen mill and decked out with all of the Victorian-era gins and looms and mules that would have made that place a real cacophony a hundred years ago. There were little placards alongside some of these machines with testimonials from the workers, all of whom seemed to be among the most miserable humans ever to walk the Earth. It makes me wonder what life will be like a hundred years from now: whether they’ll gawk at all of the horrible facets of our own lives, like having to brush our teeth or get colonoscopies or exercise.

On Sunday I slept in, did the groceries, pottered about the house, and then did not write this blog post.

now Cycling Leeds

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Now: 20 - 26 January 2025

Storm Éowyn blew in and knocked over a shed. I tried to sort out some electronics and came across a very unfortunate fault.

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Now: 6 - 12 January 2025

Our one Cold Week of the year saw me finishing my book and watching too much YouTube. At least I'm running consistently again.